A Visit From Voltaire

by Dinah Lee Küng

  ‘Gosh, it’s warm in here. Katherine, what have you done? Have you actually turned on the heat?’ cries the lively Deenie, an immediately likable women in her early forties with an English countrywoman’s heartiness.

  ‘Good Lord, has anyone called the fire engines?’ jokes her husband Ralph.

  The shy Welsh beauty Gwyneth has relinquished her coat, but is hanging on to her shawl, thank you, in case someone puts out the blaze.

  ‘I warned Miles that he better remember a jumper for the Worthys.’

  Katherine takes this teasing in her stride and the evening is full of good spirits and getting-to-know you conversation. We are among friends, who take me and my foreignness on board without the usual tiresome joking aimed at Americans. They accept me so easily, in fact, that it is with a shock that I realize that I am the oldest person in the room. When did that happen? Katherine brings out a birthday cake for Miles and there are only thirty-eight candles on it. This dark-lashed charmer on my right is a mere youth.

  Miles’ excessive courtesy to me, I realize with horror, is deference to an older woman. This is a ghastly development, but on the crest of my fiftieth year, I should have seen it coming. All my lively charm and banter, mildly flirtatious comments—should I tone these down from now on for fear of looking a bit pathetic?

  The dinner is otherwise very enjoyable, the conversation light, apolitical, unphilosophical, consisting of jolly stories and funny references to mutual friends and their foibles as well as endless frustrations with the Hot Pot experiment. The height of the evening is a story about an eccentrically stuffed squirrel that Katherine passed up at a school auction only to find it staring at her from Deenie’s mantel a week later. The guests seem fairly contented with their lives and with each other.

  Well after midnight, I leave Allen and Katherine cuddling by the fire to find V. furiously scribbling all over his fund brochures calculating interest rates.

  ‘Did they discuss Newton or Locke?’ he asks.

  I shake my head, no.

  ‘Quakerism? The theater? Smallpox inoculation? Monads?’

  ‘They talked yard sales, the disappointment of skiing in Wengen, and the irresistibility of a stuffed squirrel. We had a wonderful evening.’

  ‘Not exactly the sort of thing I overheard in London dining rooms,’ he clucks. ‘What’s happened to the English?’

  For his benefit, I recall a very different dinner in fashionable Mayfair in 1981, at the home of Charles’ friends, Vanessa and Richard. It is an evening full of floating tension running the length of the great oak table stretched between the host, the son of a peer, and his wife, a working-class Manchester girl. The guests include a couple in advertising, a talk-show pundit and a female banker who is allegedly tussling with an investment report Richard has submitted. A rather feckless au pair also makes an appearance from time to time to report on the antics of the two children in the upstairs nursery.

  The conversation is pointed, dry, cynical, competitive and sardonic. Would their MP. still be standing in the next election? Who will get that elusive interview with the Princess of Wales? Who has rented the best holiday villa in Tuscany?

  The question that should have been asked (although I didn’t know it at the time), was ‘Who has yet to sleep with our host?’ To be honest, the hostess was in the dark as well.

  ‘I only learned the truth about Richard years later, after they were divorced,’ I tell V. in the half-light of the guest room.

  ‘And how did the lady discover her aristocratic husband was catting around?’

  ‘That woman banker who brought a huge bouquet of flowers for Vanessa the night I was there gave the game away. She and Richard had already had two children. She wanted to change their name to Richard’s, especially as it was such a well-known family ‘of rank.’ Her petition had to be posted in The Times. Poor Vanessa went into shock. Through all those years of dinner parties in Mayfair, Richard was raising a second family right around the corner.’

  ‘Did you dally with this Richard?’ V. asks me pointedly.

  I shake my head ruefully. ‘Apparently I was the only woman in London who didn’t. Even the au pair who served dinner that night had a go. Come to think of it, it’s rather insulting he didn’t even try.’

  V. bursts out laughing at my brush with the titled.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you the English upper classes are froth?’

  Allen rises early the next morning to get us back to Stansted. We’ve got his copies of Louis XIV and Leibniz in V.’s trunk. ‘Didn’t you know my university thesis was on Leibniz?’ Allen asks. But like V., Allen has long ago moved beyond Leibniz. Thanks to my English friend’s eclectic tastes in authors, I’ve read Simon Ley’s novel about Napoleon, Mikhail Bulgakov’s political satire, The Master and Margarita, and The Bridge On the Drina, by Ivo Andric.

  ‘But the guy who is really fascinating me these days is John Gribbin,’ Allen says excitedly as we pull out of the driveway. ‘You have to read In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat.’ Allen explains quantum mechanics in layman’s terms. He claims it is possible although he admits, not very likely—that all the molecules of the car, the baggage and ourselves will shift to one corner of the front seat.

  ‘I’d rather make my plane on time,’ I say, laughing. From the back seat, V. butts in. ‘But this is far too interesting! For what it’s worth, I say forget the flight and let us shift the molecules.’

  In twenty years, my polymath friend Allen has never bored me. Isn’t he the very kind of Englishman who opened V.’s eyes to a world of science and philosophy untrammeled by the Church and superstition and ‘first principles?’ When I’m around Allen, I realize how little I’ve been paying attention to the world at large, from the latest rock bands half my age to the most rewarding Eastern European writers banned from print fifty years ago. His mind is open, voracious, and quixotic. He seems unprejudiced against anything except what V. would call ‘flummery.’

  V. is scribbling notes on the back of our ‘ticketless’ airline print-out. ‘This is better than Newton.’ As we scurry to the check-in counter. V. starts a heated argument when I hand the print-out to the airline staff.

  ‘Those are my notes!’ he protests.

  ‘Oh, shut-up, or you ride in cargo.’

  He retreats, pouting, to the display of new authors at the book stall. ‘I don’t see any Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawking,’ he groans. ‘The Life of Britney Spears, hmm. She reminds me of an actress in my Zaïre.’

  ‘They’re calling our flight. I’ll teach you how to order books online when we get home.’

  I instantly realize that this might be the riskiest gesture yet since making V.’s dangerous acquaintance.

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed the visit, even though we didn’t visit the Court and you didn’t get a chance to look in on Bolingbroke’s descendants. But you did like Allen and Katherine?’

  ‘She makes a formidable quince and apple tart, that Katherine,’ he nods. ‘As for Alain, he would have made a wonderful eighteenth-century man. I see that mine were simpler days, when one man could still realize the height of scientific thought, the apex of literary achievement, and political influence within a single lifetime by simply being ready to apply himself with an open mind.’

  ‘Yes, well, you should know. Allen is hardly likely to master the intricacies of space-age physics and become a rock star while holding down his day job as an oil trader, but I respect him for not giving up.’

  Then I quote V. back to his face, ‘How I love these English who say what they think, their respect for facts, reality, utility, simplicity of manners, habits and dress!’

  He nods. ‘I said it before: If ever I smelled a Resurrection or had a chance to return after death to Earth, I prayed God would make me be born in England, the Land of Liberty!’

  ‘Well, half your prayers were answered. At least you returned, if not as an Englishman,’

  ‘Oui, I thank you for bringing me.’ He tips his wide-brimmed hat.

  ‘D
on’t mention it.’

  He exclaims as he sees the coast of England recede below our window, ‘Just imagine how Newton, Locke, Clarke, and Leibniz would have been persecuted in my France or imprisoned in Rome or burned in Lisbon. What is one to think of human reason? That it was born in my century in that England, right down there!’

  I’ll refrain from arguing the case for Plato or Aquinas, but I’m glad to finally close the door on so many contradictory experiences with the British Empire, In the end, I was no more English than was Voltaire.

  ‘You know what? I’m glad to be going home.’

  V. looks at me in surprise. ‘Switzerland! Your home? That’s the first time I’ve heard you say it.’

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve felt it,’ I smile, ‘It’s the first time I return to St-Cergue from abroad.’

  ‘Perhaps my influence on you is not so negative, despite your constant efforts to dislodge me,’ he says, smiling rather wickedly.

  You can stay a bit longer if you tell me one thing. Why did you have to leave London so quickly last time?’

  ‘Well, as it was so many years ago—let’s see, very early in ‘29—I can admit now there was rather a petite question of some counterfeit banknotes. It was really a technicality, only it would have been difficult, not to say time-consuming, to clear my name and avoid a hanging. Far easier just to return to France under a royal pardon. I didn’t get back my pension from the King, but the English sales of my Henri saga set me up nicely, And I always had a scheme or two in the market.’

  Considering he’s stuffed his trunk with brochures on security technology and pharmaceutical funds, I’m lucky to get V. back to Switzerland without the Securities and Exchange Commissioner of England back on his tail.

  ‘Shall I bother to fasten my seat belt?’ he asks winsomely. His innocent act doesn’t deflect me. ‘Exactly what did you do in the City while I was shopping?’ I ask, my heart sinking at the thought he might have discovered how to trade on margin.

  He ignores my question. He’s circling exchange rates in the Financial Times.

  Chapter Nine ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR VOLTAIRE

  The Mystery Writers of America bulletin arrives in the mail.

  I’ll miss the Edgar Awards in New York next April. I’ll miss everything in New York next spring.

  I start addressing Christmas cards, but they only remind me of the distance between family and friends, and me. What I’m really avoiding is a third rewrite of the Tibet mystery.

  It’s easier to gaze out of the kitchen window. Peter has sawn a hole in the six-foot-high wall of snow lining our front walkway. Through this glistening window, I can just make out Mont Blanc. The killer peak’s razor edges gleam a deceptively innocent pink.

  Voltaire saunters into the kitchen.

  ‘And how is Mischief in the Land of the Snow Lion this morning?’

  I’ve noticed that for a mere illusion, he does look after himself remarkably well. I’ve lost count of his linen shirts, lace cuffs and kerchiefs, damask coats, and neatly rolled stockings. His teeth aren’t holding up too well, but that’s a twenty-first century quibble. I can see why the starlets of his day fell across his casting couch with enthusiasm.

  ‘I’ve renamed it, The Shadows of Shigatse.’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s as far as you’ve got? When I returned to France from England, I plunged into work. I gathered together the actors needed for my new play Brutus, but their reaction to it was very negative,’ he laughs ruefully. ‘Or should I say, brutal? I revised like the devil. The first night’s performance was glorious, yes, glorious, but only because the audience was completely made up of my friends and admirers. Brutus closed after fifteen days.’

  ‘I am so heartened by your failures, Monsieur Voltaire.’

  ‘At your service,’ he favors me with a slight bow, adding, ‘The list is long—Ériphyle, Artémire—but it never bothers me, as long as I have successes, too. I always have five or six irons in the fire at one time . . . speaking of fire,’ he lights the gas under the coffee pot, ‘have you run out of sugar again? Have your suppliers send it in bulk.’

  I’ve lost track of his daily coffee intake, but one evening he was up to forty cups. Is it caffeine nerves, or do I detect a growing irritation at our family’s happy preoccupation with the coming of Christmas—what he keeps disparaging as ‘that Jesuit myth?’ Then he gets more jittery reading newspaper headlines about ‘infamy’ unleashed and has to calm himself down with hot chocolate. He’s constantly complaining of digestion problems.

  He picks up a Christmas card that shows three cartoon reindeer logging on to the Internet to view a lady reindeer in a bikini.

  ‘Mon Dieu, how vulgar! I once wrote The Temple if Taste, but now I’d rename it the The Temple of Bad Taste . . . You know, your endeavors make me think I might write a mystery myself.’

  ‘You! Write a mystery?’

  ‘Why not?’ He adopts a sinister expression. ‘The Poisoned Priest, Venom at Versailles, The Cardinal’s Cutlass—’ He has me holding my stomach at his antics, creeping around the kitchen like a vaudeville villain.

  ‘Great titles, but it’s the plotting that’s hard.’

  ‘I’ve already got my plot—the murder of my friend, Adrienne.’

  Intrigued, I follow him out of the kitchen to the terrace to settle at the table in the sun. A horrible scrambling wail hits our ears from the icy lane beyond our gate. A wire fence meant to restrain the sled dogs next door is caving over under the weight of accumulated snow. Two young huskies have mounted a drift and leap to freedom. In a moment’s scramble, the dogs spot one of the wild cats that hunt our hillside basking on a hot, dry rock. The panicked feline dashes towards a parked van, but her hind legs are captured in the merciless jaws of a dog. The victim is yanked from the van’s underbelly, and with the ferocious help of the other dog, she’s ripped into two pieces like a piece of toffee.

  V. is the first to recover from shock. After all, unlike me, he’s already seen murder first hand.

  ‘Do you think anybody’s going to clean that mess up off the snow?’ I ask feebly, collapsing into a chair next to him.

  ‘Here, drink some coffee. At least death came swiftly. Now take the lingering demise of Adrienne. Paris’s most famous actress, my ex-lover and good friend died in my arms after four days of painful dysentery and inflammation. She was only thirty-eight years old.’

  ‘She was really murdered?’ I drag my horrified attention away from the shreds of cat scattered outside our gate.

  Voltaire gazes absent-mindedly at Mont Blanc through the icy hole. ‘Well, everyone said she was murdered by the Duchesse de Bouillon. I did not join fashionable Society in pointing the finger.’

  ‘You thought it was a natural death, huh?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t say that,’ he turns, his sharp cheekbones catching the morning rays. ‘I said I didn’t point my finger at the Duchesse. And suggesting another culprit might be as good as signing my own death warrant. But I reckon as we’re ALL dead now, it’s safe to tell the truth.’

  ‘A real murder?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ he warns me, discarding his tufted jacket of white matelasse and unbuttoning his brocade vest. ‘Ah, I can finally warm my frozen bones.’

  The walls of crystalline snow transform the terrace into a sheltered courtyard. Eye-splitting sunshine bathes the wooden table. Voltaire pulls a pair of sunglasses out of his vest pocket and sets out his Berlin coffee service featuring a crown of laurels surrounding the lyre of Apollo, according to a design by Frederick the Great.

  I lean towards him. ‘Monsieur Voltaire, excuse me, but those sunglasses look just like my husband’s.’

  ‘They are your husband’s . . . so ingenious . . . look, the frames regain their shape no matter which way they’re twisted.’ He contorts Peter’s $300 wire frames into an S shape. ‘Italians are such wonderful artisans, non? These are signed by a craftsman named Armani.’

  ‘Peter might miss them,’ I say through gritted
teeth. Having the greatest mind of the eighteenth century as your imaginary friend makes for delightful conversation, but when he appropriates Peter’s few real luxuries, he gets on my nerves.

  ‘Not while the poor man slaves down in all that fog,’ Voltaire waves one dismissive hand in the direction of the Red Cross headquarters. ‘Now, here’s my mystery. You’ll help me modernize it later for publication. Much of what I’m going to tell you leaked out from the Paris police reports of the day . . . ’

  ***

  ‘You must first understand that Adrienne was the most honest and talented of Frenchwomen. Her father, a humble hatter, moved his family to Paris from Reims when she was only ten. She grew up a few streets from the Théâtre-Français and dreamed of stardom. At fourteen, she organized a little group of players to perform around Paris in the most exclusive salons. ‘

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘Oh, striking in every way. Not slim, according to your modern fashion, but her voice was like music—natural, not singsong. Her figure was graceful, her expressions so mobile! When she was on the stage, she didn’t prance from one corner of the rectangle to the other, she didn’t recite.’

  I prompt him. ‘She really acted. She became her characters.’

  He sips his brew. ‘Précisément. And that alone was a theatrical revolution for which any playwright of my time was grateful. It was all real to her.’

  He stops for a sip of coffee. ‘Now, enter, stage right, another character, the one true love of Adrienne’s life, Maurice of Saxony. Picture the illegitimate son, one of three hundred bastards of Augustus the Strong who had deposed the Polish King Stanislaus, father-in-law to none other than our King Louis—’

  ‘—XV. I know. What did Maurice look like?’

  ‘A brute,’ Voltaire sniffs, glancing at me over the rim of Peter’s shades. ‘It’s true that Maurice took my place in Adrienne’s bed, but I am not one to brood. No, Maurice was an ambitious cad. All right, he was tall, his face slightly too wide to be called classically handsome, curling hair parted in the middle, robust build, sensual, courageous, ambitious, and brave —’